Qian Hong was only hours old when she was left on the street outside a busy convenience store in China.
Now 11 months old, the little girl has a new name, Abby Grunenberg, and a new home on the Sunshine Coast. She happily plays with a colourful toy on the living room floor while Ken and Lisa Grunenberg talk about their experience adopting children from China.
Abby is the second child Lisa and Ken have adopted. Three-year-old Haley was also abandoned by her birth parents, left outside a TV station.
"It's a very common thing for people to abandon their children in China," said Lisa.
The trend is growing in that country as a result of a law passed in the 1970s limiting parents to one child. The law was meant to keep the population, which had already exploded, from getting unmanageable. But the importance of having a male child in the Chinese culture has left many, mainly female, children without a home.
A book Lisa and Ken bought for their children Abby and Haley, titled When You Were Born in China, offers insight into the importance of male children.
"Remember that China is a very old country, so some ideas have been around for thousands of years. One of those ideas is that a son should take care of his parents when they get older. Of course parents love their daughters very much. But if they only have daughters, the daughters will get married and move away to live with their husbands, where they will help take care of their husband's parents," said a passage in the book.
Parents who have more than one child face serious fines in China and often demotions at their place of work or eviction from their homes. So parents who have baby girls often leave them in public places so they cannot be identified and will eventually be taken to one of the government-run orphanages in China.
An orphanage like this is where Lisa and Ken found their first daughter, Haley.
"We are unable to have children of our own, so we started looking into adoption in 1999," said Ken.
The pair first tried adopting locally, but found the process was slow. Because of Ken's age, the couple were not eligible for many adoptions of young children who became available.
"In B.C., the birth moms are able to choose who they want to take care of their child, and because I'm a bit older, we weren't high on the list," said Ken.
After waiting to adopt a child for three years with no success, Ken and Lisa decided to look into adopting a child from another country.
They soon discovered the process would be expensive and some countries didn't have a good adoption system.
"China is really the best we found. We worked with an agency in Vancouver called TRIBO which was really good. They spoon-fed us through the entire process," said Ken.
The cost to adopt Haley was $25,000. Ken said that when you have the opportunity to adopt a child after waiting for years, "you can find the money."
They borrowed the sum and flew to China in January 2003 where they were matched with 14-month-old Haley.Having her has been a joy, say the parents, who soon decided they wanted a sibling for Haley.
They started the adoption process again, this time knowing a little bit more about what to expect. On Sept. 21 of this year, Ken, Lisa and Haley flew back to China to meet their new daughter and sister, Abby.
Right away Ken and Lisa noticed a difference in Abby.
"She is a lot healthier than Haley was. Haley wouldn't make eye contact with anyone for a long time and developmentally she was about four months old instead of 14," said Lisa. This is partially because of the number of children in an orphanage in China. It's not unusual to find 20 or more babies in an orphanage with only a handful of workers to care for them.
With love and patience, Lisa and Ken helped Haley develop the skills appropriate for her age. By the age of two she was on track according to Canadian standards.
Abby seems to be at the right stage developmentally, so now Lisa and Ken are spending their time raising their children the same as any other family would.
And Ken is not worried about people accepting his children once they are in school.
"I think it's such a small town that everyone knows everybody here and they will probably know Abby and Haley's story before they even get to school, so it won't have to be explained," said Ken.
The parents plan to explain the story to Abby and Haley as soon as they are old enough to understand.
"Haley already knows she has two mommies and I'm keeping all of the documents and cutting out newspaper clippings that explain the situation in China, so when she's older I can show her," said Lisa.
For more information, go to www.adoption-bc.com.
